AEW News – CM Punk/Satoshi Kojima At Forbidden Door II, Jeff Hardy, Collision, Jim Ross

CM Punk will take on Satoshi Kojima in the first round of the Owen Hart Cup tournament at AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door 2023.

Although Punk was previously rumored to face KENTA at the event, those plans were eventually canceled.

Taking to Twitter, Kojima reacted to his match with Punk at Sunday’s show. He tweeted,

“Is this a dream? Now I’m eating bread and looking at this information. But it must be real. I’ll do my best thank you.”

AEW President Tony Khan replied, “It’s very real, my friend! See you this weekend!”

It’s very real, my friend!

See you this weekend!

— Tony Khan (@TonyKhan) June 22, 2023

As we reported last night here on eWn, Jeff Hardy will not be partaking in AEW’s tour of Canada, which commences this weekend. The reason is due to Jeff’s previous legal issues that prevent him from crossing the border.

Jim Ross was absent from the AEW commentary booth at last night’s Dynamite and he was not backstage either. Ross suffered a black eye due to a minor accident this past week. and is currently taking time off to heal.

CM Punk, FTR, and Ricky Starks cut a promo for their match against Bullet Club Gold & The Gunns on AEW Collision this Saturday. You can check that out below:

In a recent appearance on the “AEW Unrestricted” podcast, Rocky Romero opined that although he loved last year’s AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door, the event felt “cursed.” 

CM Punk suffered an injury ahead of his main event match against Hiroshi Tanahashi and Jon Moxley defeated the Ace of NJPW to become the new interim AEW World Champion. Romero said,

“It definitely felt going into Forbidden Door [2022], that there was like a Forbidden Door curse, like we should have not have done this, we should not have run these two companies together [laughs]. You just started seeing wrestlers fall off through injuries, through COVID, there were travel issues. Everything under the sun that could possibly go wrong, definitely went wrong. Me and TK definitely had some late nights trying to figure out what to do and who was available and going back and forth between the Japan side and trying to figure it all out. So far, so good this year, knock on wood. Yeah, last year obviously was, I think, just an incredible show. The crowd alone had a very unique energy compared to maybe some other shows last year and that helped to make the atmosphere just incredible. [It was] probably my favorite pay-per-view that I’ve seen in a long time. I’m biased because I’m part of it, but for sure I thought it was a great pay-per-view and I expect that this year is gonna blow last year’s out of the water.”

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